


if you live through this with me

by mollivanders



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Minor Character Death, Post Season 4 Finale, Raven Gets a HEA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 21:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11170770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: He leads and she checks him, though he’s less prone to rebel tendencies when he’s the king.“You’re a pain in the ass, Raven,” he says when she hands him the requisition list and she grins.“Happy to serve,” she jokes, and he walks backwards into a wall as he tries to make a smooth exit.She doesn’tquitemanage not to laugh at him. For all her memories of the ground that she’d like to forget, there are others more bittersweet than bitter. She turns them over in her memory when nobody is looking, private thoughts that grow from seeds into more. She remembers the way he’d jumped when she’d yelledBOOM!; how he carried her when she had fallen to the ground, anguished and speechless; how he’d closed the shuttle door, and she’d breathed easy for the first time that day.She remembers.





	if you live through this with me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stainofmylove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stainofmylove/gifts).



> Written for stainofmylove as part of a DW ficathon. Prompt was "if you live through this with me, I swear that I will die for you". I've half-convinced myself _The 100_ has pulled a S4 _LOST_ on me and I'm prepping myself to get with the program. As for the science of how long the Earth burns for - I put about as much scientific research into this fic as the writers have probably put into the show ;)

The first time they nearly die is the day they return, and she still hasn’t recovered; still dreams of living that much again.

(It barely counts. It’s the ground, killing them all over again.)

She’s used to it. She’s beaten it before.

She’ll beat it again.

+

The second time they nearly die is when coolant leaks into the water tank and the terrible shock of not having a doctor on board bowls them over. They drag themselves back to health inch by inch, scavenging supplies from the clinic and drinking an awful liquid that Emori brews, barely conscious. They’re not even sure it’ll work but somehow –

Somehow when Bellamy takes the lead and tosses the concoction back without a moment’s hesitation, leading by example –

She trusts him.

After – after they’ve pulled themselves back from the brink of death – Bellamy doesn’t say a word about _her_. He takes a look at the lot of them – mechanic, engineer, a guard, a thief, two grounders, and settles back on Emori.

“You think you can learn this stuff?” he asks, gesturing broadly around the clinic. She looks up, exhausted surprised running across her face, and for the first time in almost a year, a flicker of hope runs through her. Emori is strong. Emori is smart.

(Once, everybody picked her first.)

+

They take rotating shifts, keeping watch over the Ark, and some days she doesn’t see him at all.

(Sometimes, he finds her late at the intersection of their turns.)

She’s finished her daily repairs, celebrating with a potent cup of something that came out of Monty’s improv still – the boy knows how to make liquor – when Bellamy slides down on the floor beside her. The earth slowly turns above them through a glass pane, three feet thick, and he sighs, knocking his head back against the wall.

“It’s still burning,” he says and can’t seem to take his eyes off of it. She nods, drinking, until he stretches out his hand and she passes him the cup without thinking.

(Once, she’d held a knife to his throat.)

“Nuclear fire,” she says, the words slipping out of her like a river ramble, “there won’t be anything left.”

As soon as she says it she wishes she could forget the words, but he doesn’t even flinch.

“Doesn’t matter that far down,” he says, passing the cup back to her. “Octavia will be fine.”

(The thought hadn’t even crossed her mind.)

Well, she might be selfish, she thinks – but at least she’s alive.

It’s more than she can say for some.

+

The third time they nearly die, it’s been two weeks since their latest disaster and Raven thinks this is how it’ll go for the next five years (four years, seven months, one week and three days) until the ground is safe again – or until they fail. She knows, once they go back, she’ll never get up here again. Nobody will, not for a hundred years, if there’s even anyone left by then.

(She dreams, always, of spacewalking.)

They sleep deeply that night, crammed into shared quarters while they expand their footprint room by room, hatch by hatch, across the parts of the Ark they need. When the others have all drifted away, she and Bellamy are still there.

(Are you with me? _Always_.)

She’d meant it – or mostly meant it, when she wasn’t holding a knife to his throat or chewing him out for some pigheaded fuck-up. She wasn’t his co-leader, and wouldn’t be for all the hydrazine in the world.

She wasn’t Clarke.

(She wasn’t going to disappear.)

+

They survive one year, then two, and Raven’s memories of the ground are almost as hazy as her memories of the friends they’d left behind. They’d had barely more than six months together, and as soon as she’d almost relaxed, almost thought the shit wouldn’t hit the bulkhead, the ground would try to kill you again.

It nearly did, makes her cling to her life up here by the tips of her fingers, stealing breath after breath.

So she doesn’t miss the ground, or the life they’d never quite built down below. She floats between stations, scavenging parts for their small corner of black space, and Bellamy stays with her on the radio.

“You ever hear anything from the ground?” she asks once and she can see him shake his head in her mind’s eye. “Nothing from Octavia?” The fires have long since burnt out, chunks of dark ash covering the earth, and if Raven was a worrier, she’d worry like hell about the fact that the oceans were burnt away.

That’s a six year problem.

“Too much interference,” he says, his constant ready answer, and she nods knowingly.

(Wasn’t there always?)

+

He leads and she checks him, though he’s less prone to rebel tendencies when he’s the king.

“You’re a pain in the ass, Raven,” he says when she hands him the requisition list and she grins.

“Happy to serve,” she jokes, and he walks backwards into a wall as he tries to make a smooth exit.

She doesn’t _quite_ manage not to laugh at him. For all her memories of the ground that she’d like to forget, there are others more bittersweet than bitter. She turns them over in her memory when nobody is looking, private thoughts that grow from seeds into more. She remembers the way he’d jumped when she’d yelled _BOOM!_ ; how he carried her when she had fallen to the ground, anguished and speechless; how he’d closed the shuttle door, and she’d breathed easy for the first time that day.

She remembers.

+

The days bleed together in space, and slowly, the world below becomes less of a touchstone, less of a thing to go back to so much as a _possibility_ of one day. A _maybe_.

Up here, he finds her, or she finds him, after a long day of surviving one damn thing or another. There’s not much to lead on besides _survive, survive, you’re my people so you’re survive_ but there’s a strain at the back of his shoulders where he hunches over his knees, long arms stretched out as he dangles a cup Monty’s moonshine in front of him.

(Moonshine glints over the bow of the ark, and sunshine glints off its back.)

“I fixed the motivator in Section 13 today,” she says, stealing a look at him in the soft light. It’s been a long time, but she remembers. The ground is hard and she looks forward instead of back but –

Some things she turns over in her hands, plants them in the stars and hopes for more.

(It’s been so long since she hoped for anything.)

He laughs, wry amusement lacing his voice as she tilts his head to look at her. “That’s good,” he says and grins. “I never worry about you.”

She studies him, the moonshine swimming in her head, and closes the distance between them. “You shouldn’t sit like that,” she warns. When her fingers brush across his back he jumps at her touch. “I should know,” she adds, and she can’t rip her eyes off the spot where his neck curves below his shirt. “Lots of…cramped spaces.” She doesn’t pull her hand away and the sound he makes when she slides it down his back releases something pools low heat in her body.

“Raven,” he says, her name a ragged breath on his tongue and she thinks _fuck it_.

(She remembers some things.)

They stumble together that night, alone in abandoned quarters, his hands lifting her up against a bulkhead and she mewls, pulling his face closer to hers. It’s familiar, stronger, brighter than before and this time –

This time she doesn’t run away.

+

It’s a subtle shift but a familiar dynamic, and in the back of her mind she worries about second choices and second chances. They are not children anymore, if they ever were, but – old wounds heal slowly.

“What do you think is down there?” he asks one night, his fingers curling in her ponytail as she’s trying to fall asleep. He breathes deeply next to her, easy in rest if nothing else, and she gives the smallest shake of her head. “Ash,” she mumbles, “lots of dirt.” She drags herself further from sleep and cracks an eye open to look at him. “What do _you_ think is down there?”

He shakes his head, staring up at the ceiling. “Nothing we don’t have here,” he says.

(True enough.)

+

(They never talk about _her_ , and not once does she hear him say her name.

She is the woman who lingers among them, but less and less with every day.

Until she doesn’t.)

+

Four years in and they nearly die again, though not all of them this time. An airlock vent breaks loose near Echo and the grounder swings into space, a shocked look on her open face, as if to say _I told you this was a bad idea_. Raven goes out in a spacesuit as Bellamy seals all the airlocks in between. She’s never quite heard anything like his voice when she confirms the hard seal.

“You okay?” he asks, panicked and strained, and she nods before remembering to open the channel.

“Fit as a fiddle,” she says with false cheer, trying not to look behind her into space. She finds him just on the other side of the bulkhead, squeezing the radio in his palm. His eyes are huge and frightened like a child’s and she freezes, unsure what to do. She’s never known what to do with that kind of fear.

(Come on, spacewalker.)

The moment she’s clear, he’s wrapped her in a tight vise of a hug that lasts only a brief second.

“I couldn’t lose you,” he mutters into her hair as he lets go and she breathes, relaxing herself. His emotion is a tailspin that has her stepping back, still hesitant to trust after all this time.

She has her reasons.

“Yeah?” she asks, aiming for noncommittal and failing miserable. “You got lucky then.”

He doesn’t smile, doesn’t speak, but pushes the hair back from her face to look at her. It’s almost overwhelming.

(Some days, it is.)

+

The time on the Ark drags on, day after day, and with six months to go they all look down at the planet in despair. There’s a green patch here and there growing in defiance but mostly – ash.

“We’ll never survive,” Harper says and Bellamy shoots her a look that says _not on my watch_. Ever practical, the wheels start turning in Raven’s head while the others argue, calculating.

“We can make it,” she says, interrupting their debate and looking right at Bellamy. “We could wait it out another year.”

Murphy opens his mouth as if to say _are you fucking kidding_ , the taste of algae like a second skin, but he _owes_ her – he’ll always owe her – and he shuts his mouth again without comment. Nobody else protests and Bellamy takes another look back at the charred planet behind them.

“So we stay,” he says.

+

Six years in, she’s finished tinkering with a communications system that’s on the fritz, robbing from one part of the Ark to sustain another, and drinking something new from Monty, when Bellamy wanders around the corner.

“You’re late,” she says, passing him her cup. “You missed the moonrise.”

He slides down next to her, nodding in quiet agreement.

“It was pretty special,” she adds, yearning to hear him, surprised at herself and tired (not that tired). He stretches an arm around her waist and she leans against him, not quite in sync but close enough.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “We’ll stay for the next one.”

_Finis_

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted _someone_ to die up there but not my faves, so it was either Harper or Echo. Space is dangerous. I also read an interesting meta after the S4 finale talking about how and why Raven doesn't want to wait for Clarke, and how she prioritizes her own survival. Some of those thoughts made it into this fic.
> 
> I'm [ladytharen](http://ladytharen.tumblr.com) @ Tumblr if you want to say hi.


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